Huygens: A first look at Titan

Prof John Zarnecki

Tuesday 22 March 2005

at Cranfield University, Bedfordshire

Public open lecture - All visitors welcome - No admission
fee - No tickets required - No advance booking - Just turn up ! - Doors open
5:30pm

Public open lecture

All visitors welcome

No admission fee

No tickets required

No advance booking

Just turn up !

Doors open 6:00pm

After an interplanetary journey of 7 1/4 years, the European Space Agency's probe Huygens landed on the surface of Saturn's largest moon,
Titan, having been released from NASA's Cassini spacecraft last Christmas Day. Titan, which is larger than the planet Mercury, is the only planetary satellite
in the entire Solar System to possess a significant atmosphere. Most interestingly, it appears that Titan's atmosphere is the site of a whole range
of chemical reactions which produce increasingly complex hydrocarbon molecules. Similar reactions in Earth's early atmosphere over 4 billion years ago led to
the conditions under which simple life evolved. The journey of the Huygens probe will be described as well as its final dramatic plunge to the surface. Very
early results will be presented with emphasis on the United Kingdom's contribution.

John C. Zarnecki was born and raised in London. He studied physics at Queens' College, Cambridge
University, then went on to get his doctorate in X-ray astronomy from University College London. Zarnecki spent 18 years in the Space Group at the Unit for Space
and Astrophysics, University of Kent at Canterbury rising to the position of Reader in Space Sciences. In 2000, Zarnecki accepted the position of Professor
of Space Science in the Planetary Sciences Research Institute at The Open University (OU), in Milton Keynes, England. His primary research interests are
in the development of spacecraft instruments for the study of the properties of the surface and atmospheres of planets, satellites, and minor bodies. Other
research interests include hypervelocity impact studies in various applications, including the survivability of bacteria in such impacts and X-ray emission from
solar system surfaces and atmospheres and impacts on the Moon.

Zarnecki is principal investigator for the Science Surface Package (SSP) on the European Space
Agency's Huygens probe, and a co-investigator on the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument (HASI). Zarnecki was also a member of the Beagle 2 team,
and a co-investigator for the Environmental Sensors Suite that would have made measurements of meteorological, radiation and physical properties on the surface
of Mars. He is the deputy principal investigator for PTOLEMY, an instrument onboard ESA's Rosetta mission, which is designed to measure isotopic ratios on
the surface of comet 46P/Wirtanen. He is an expert in spacecraft instrumentation, and environmental sensors, and has published more than 150
papers.